


The Threat You Don't See...

by AllHallowsEve



Series: Wincest Colored Glasses [29]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Death Omen, Episode: s02e07 The Usual Suspects, Fear, Hope, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 08:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15837192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllHallowsEve/pseuds/AllHallowsEve
Summary: The brothers think they are working a vengeful spirit case but it turns out to be a death omen.  They end up in jail, and a murder charge becomes the least of Dean's worries.Season 2 Episode 7 as seen through Wincest Colored Glasses.





	The Threat You Don't See...

**Author's Note:**

> As always this work is unbeta'd so please point out any problems or errors so I can fix it and make it better for everyone.

Sam sat in the police interrogation room and worried about Dean.  He wasn’t sure where his brother was but once the small petite female cop made it clear that Dean was also at the station with another cop, Sam breathed the first clear breath he had managed since being arrested.  Until her next statement was that Dean was being held on the suspicion of murder, which stole his breath like a punch to the gut. 

Sam tried to hold his panic together while the woman began running through the facts of his life, reading from a folder she held conspicuously out in front of her.  He tried to act unfazed but he was struggling.  As far as the cops were concerned, Dean was supposed to be dead, now they knew he wasn’t. 

He was scared for his brother, but once the detective made the mistake of saying, “It’s not your fault Dean’s your brother.”  Sam’s face shut down. 

His ire began to rise as she said, “Dean’s a bad guy.”  His jaw tightened and he stared straight ahead, as she continued to taunt him, “His life is over,” but then she finished with, “your’s doesn’t have to be.”

His brows furrowed in surprised honest confusion.  He turned his face up to look at where she was angled above him as she sat on the corner of the desk.  “You want me to turn against my own brother?”  Disbelief was plain in his voice but it was swirled with an intense measure of disdain at the thought that anyone would ever even remotely consider it to be a possibility.

She denied that was what she wanted, explained calmly that they caught Dean red handed at the Karen Giles murder scene, so they just needed Sam to fill in some missing pieces. 

The fact that they had caught Dean at a murder scene caused Sam’s heart to flutter in desperation.  He tried to hide his shock and fear.  He asked in a quiet hurt voice, “Why would I do that?”

She took a seat across from him and as she began to softly describe that she could talk to the D.A. and make a deal for him. His forehead wrinkled and his face took on a lost fearful quality that made him look much younger than his 23 years.

She said, “You can get on with your life.  Dean’s as good as gone.”

His expression crumbled into tortured agony for a split second, he looked away from her and towards the wall, closing himself down.  His face morphed into a cold calm mask as he faced her again. 

She couldn’t know how asinine her statement was.  If Dean was gone, Sam’s life would be over.  No matter where he went or what he did, if Dean was locked up, Sam’s soul would wither away to nothing, like a plant locked in a sunless room.  He would be the one outside, but he would be trapped and barely existing if Dean was stolen from him. 

He began to play along, to fill in the gaps as it were, but not to help himself, just to bide his time until he could come up with a plan to break Dean out.  He had to find a chink in the situation they were in, and the only hope he had of that was buying them both time somehow.  He wove a lie about his dad and Tony Giles being old friends that had been in the service together. 

Sam told her that they had known the family since they were kids, so as soon as they heard about his death they had come to town.  It made him think back to when Dean had first shown him the paper with the details of the man’s death. The locked room mystery had lit all the buttons on Dean’s radar.  He remembered Dean calling him Scully to Dean’s Mulder.  He had acted like he was insulted, but it had actually caused warm fuzzy feelings in his stomach when his brother’s face had taken on a charming grin as he described Sam as a red headed woman.  He hid the mirth the memory caused, behind bravado with the detective, telling her smugly that it would have been hard for Dean to kill Tony since they hadn’t been in town when they heard about the man’s death.

He went on to describe a lie of how they went to see Tony’s wife Karen as soon as they hit town to check on her, and stayed a little while and then left.  But then when the detective confronted him about a witness seeing two men matching the brothers’ descriptions breaking into Tony’s office, Sam added that Karen had given them the key so they could retrieve some of her things.

His mind returned to the actual memory of how he and Dean had indeed broken into the man’s office to search for any evidence of what might have happened.  The only clue Karen had given when they interviewed her had been that Tony had had a nightmare before he died of a pale woman at the foot of his bed with red eyes. 

The brothers had found a crazy scene with the name Dana Shulps scrawled on paper all around in the office and even on Giles’s glass-top desk.  Dean had searched through Giles’s filing cabinets and Sam had searched online for any information on who this mysterious Dana Shulps might be, but nothing turned up.  Sam worked on cracking Giles’s password on his computer but it had taken too long for Dean’s patience to hold out.  Dean’s boredom lead to him annoying Sam so Dean decided to go talk to Karen again and ask her if she had any information on who Dana Shulps might be and how she might be connected.

That was the last time Sam saw Dean before the cops had busted in their motel room door and scared the crap out of Sam.  He realized that Dean must have gotten to Karen’s too late to save her, but just in time for the cops to arrest him for her murder.

 

*******************************************

 

Dean sat in the cell staring at the mirror, knowing he was being watched at least part of the time.  His thoughts were on Sam.  He knew Sam was there, the pompous male detective had wanted to rub his nose in the fact that it was his fault they had known where to find Sam in the first place.  It dug at his craw but he didn’t want to show the guy the satisfaction of a reaction.

Dean didn’t have a clue as to how this would play out, but was sure he and Sam could come up with a solution.  He had no clue what was going on with this case, and wanted to get it solved and get out of dodge but he had to play it cool for right now until something cracked and gave him a chance to get out of this mess.

At least Sam was safe, and they really didn’t have anything to tie Sam to anything.  Worst case scenario, Dean would be sent away, which sucked but as long as Sam was safe that was the only thing he truly cared about.  Truth was, if Dean got convicted, Sam would probably be better off.  He could go back to Stanford and get back to his old life that Dean had pulled him from.  Selfishly that was the last thing Dean wanted, especially if there was even a remote chance that Sam wanted him too, the way the small voice of hope kept insisting he did, but he was just thinking about worst case scenarios at the moment.

His mind kept going back to the weird Dana Shulps issue.  It had to mean something.  His brain churned on it and once the court appointed lawyer showed up, he finally had some paper and pen to work it out whether or not it was an anagram the way he suspected.  Once he asked the attorney to look at the potential list of things it might mean, and the man pointed out that Ashland was a street close by, Dean realized what he had to do.  There was no way he could escape the room he was in without notice, but he could create a distraction so that Sam could hopefully break free and figure out what was going on.  His brother was smart, and he was counting on him to solve this and probably get Dean out as well.  It was the best play he had so he went with his gut, sending Sam a message through his attorney indicating what to do.

 

*******************************************

 

Sam read the note and realized that Dean was planning to create a diversion, so as soon as the detective came in and told the attorney that he was needed with Dean, Sam knew this was his only chance to get free.  He made quick work of opening the window and climbing outside.  It was dicey for a minute or two getting across to the fire escape but his long limbs and years of training by his dad to get out of any situation paid off in spades.

 

*******************************************

 

Dean actually had fun confessing into the camera.  Sure it was just to give Sam a chance to break free, but it was fun to describe to all the cops what was actually going on.  Being brutally honest was an intoxicating experience.  He had nothing to lose, and putting it all out there, the facts as he knew it about the case, it was freeing, and gave him a complete sense of satisfaction to screw with the jerk of a detective that had been assigned to the case.  He knew he had gotten under the jackass’s skin when the prick came around the desk and threw Dean up against the wall.  It wasn’t until the pretty petite female detective called the guy on the violence that the detective walked away.

After the outburst, Dean sat trying not to be bored out of his skull while waiting for the next shoe to drop.  He knew Sam would be out there working the case, and he just had to bide his time chained to the table with nothing to do.

The female detective walked in and began asking him questions about all the stuff he had said during his ‘confession.’  At first he blew her off, thinking that she was just trying to get him to slip up about his story.  But then he noticed how rattled she seemed and recognized the two dark marks on her wrist.  He asked her about them and she confessed she had no clue where they came from.  He got her to admit that she had seen the vengeful spirit and told her that Karen had had them on her wrists too. He told her to go find Sam and that he would help her.  She was shocked he was giving his brother up, but he told her that she was in danger and could either use the information to go arrest Sam or she could let Sam save her life.

 

*******************************************

 

Sam had gone to the first motel listed in the yellow pages just like they always did in emergency situations and checked in under the name Jim Rockford.  He was busy working the new details of the case when the knock came at the door.  He was astonished when it was the female detective, but instead of being there to arrest him, she told him she had seen the vicious spirit and it had marked her.

He asked her to tell him exactly what she saw.  After she described her encounter, he had her look at crime scene photos he had gathered from any women he could find that had gone missing from or were murdered on Ashland street.  After trying to give him a hard time for having crime scene photos in the first place, she sat and examined each one.  It only took a moment before she recognized a mug shot of the woman who was now a spirit.

Sam informed the detective that it was Claire Becker who was 28 years old and had disappeared eight or nine months ago.  The detective asked why she would come after her, and Sam explained that before her death, she had been arrested twice for dealing heroin.  But even though the detective told him she had worked narcotics, she didn’t remember ever arresting her.

He saw on the report that she had last been seen entering a place on Ashland Street but the cops had searched and never found her there.  Sam told the detective that they had to search it themselves to see if they could find her body so they could put her spirit to rest by salting and burning it.  She didn’t much like the idea but was obviously out of her depths so she followed his lead.

They searched the building, Sam split off to go upstairs and found no signs of anything unusual.  His heart ached for his brother.  He didn’t mind working a case alone when he and Dean had to split up to save time, but the thought of his brother being stuck at the jail, and potentially going away for murder, it scared him to death.  He had to find a way to not only free this spirit, but figure out a plan to free his brother as well.  He tried to focus on the job at hand first but it was hard. 

He had barely made it partway through the upper area when he heard the detective call out for him from downstairs.  He rushed to her side and she was visibly shaken, but he saw nothing untoward around her.  She told him she had seen Claire and she was just kind of reaching out for her, not hurting her.  She told him that the spirit had come from over by the window.

After moving some shelving they realized that Dana Shulps was an amalgamation of the storefront’s old lettering and that it was highlighted on the back wall of the place from the streetlamp.  Sam took out his EMF reader aiming it at the wall, which caused it to light up like Christmas.  He began to break the bricks out of the wall with a long piece of pipe.  The mortar was old and he made a hole pretty easily, as he worked at it, he talked about how the case didn’t make any sense.  He had never had a vengeful spirit lead him to their body before.  Once the hole was big enough, they found the body and realized that her hands were bound, which would have caused the bruising just like on the detective’s wrists.

She noticed a necklace on the corpse and couldn’t hide her own recognition from Sam.  He asked her about it and she cryptically said she had seen it before, adding that it was rare, and made over on Carson Street.  Sam turned his confused visage towards her but before he could ask any questions she reached into her own collar and pulled out a matching necklace stating that she had one just like it.  She told him her partner Pete had given it to her.  He had also worked narcotics at the same time Claire had been arrested.

Everything clicked and the case finally made sense to Sam.  He explained that Claire wasn’t in fact a vengeful spirit.  She was a death omen.  She wasn’t trying to kill anyone she was trying to warn them.  She just wanted justice and was trying to lead them to her killer.  Sam hated doing it, but he asked the detective just how much she knew about her partner.

She told Sam that a year ago some heroin went missing from lockup but they never figured out who did it, but they knew it had to be a cop, and whoever it was would need a fence for it, like Claire.

 

*******************************************

 

Dean was told he was being extradited to St. Louis and was summarily shifted into the back of a transport where he saw through the bars, that the detective who had slammed him against the wall driving.  It was 2am and it felt all kinds of wrong to Dean.  The guy wouldn’t answer him when he asked about it.  He knew in his bones he was in trouble.

 

*******************************************

 

Sam panicked when the detective got off the phone to the precinct and informed him that Pete had left there with Dean and was now refusing to answer his radio. 

Sam’s mind worked feverishly to figure out any solution and when he heard that Dean was being moved in a county vehicle he realized they could get the lojack turned on so they could track it.

 

*******************************************

 

Pete pulled the vehicle off the road onto a deserted patch of land leading off into a wooded area.  He yanked Dean out of the van and threw him to the ground, his hands and feet chained together making any movement, on Dean’s part, limited.

Dean managed to get up on his knees and the guy told him he wasn’t going to make it to St. Louis, that he was going to die trying to escape.  He pulled his gun and pointed it at Dean. 

Thoughts of Sam flashed through Dean’s mind, all the things he never got to say, and all the ways he never got to show Sammy how much he loved him.  His heart beat jaggedly against his chest as he realized he was never going to get to see his brother again.  He pleaded with the guy to wait, to talk it out and not do something he would regret.  But it had no effect on the man.  He cocked the gun and smiled.  Dean’s chin dropped, his eyes falling towards the ground as his thoughts floated away to picture Sam.

 

*******************************************

 

Sam’s heart stopped as he and the detective came up on the small clearing where Pete had Dean down on his knees at the business end of his gun.  He felt powerless and paralyzed by fear, not wanting to make a wrong move that might send a bullet into his brother.  The woman next to him called out to Pete telling him to put the gun down, momentary relief washed over Sam as the gun turned away from Dean towards her.

The man answered back in surprise, calling her Diana.  Asking her how she found him, seeming not at all dissuaded from his purpose, by their showing up.

She confronted him with the knowledge of Claire but he denied knowing what she was talking about.

Sam’s eyes were searching Dean’s face and body hoping to discover that his brother was as of yet unharmed.

Sam’s face fell in dismay as he watched Pete aim the gun back at his brother, but Diana kept talking, trying to figure out some way to handle the situation.  She accused him of the other two deaths that had drawn the brothers to town in the first place.  Pete had excuses for all of it, insisting he had to clean up the mess of their wanting to turn against him.

Dean looked to Sam, whose face was filled with anxious worry.  Sam cut his eyes to a large branch on the ground, trying to make some kind of plan with Dean non-verbally, but Dean shook his head telling his brother to hold off.  Dean wanted to keep the danger aimed at himself, not Sam, and if Sam made a move to attack, he was sure Pete would shoot him instantly.

Pete told Diana he still loved her and she dropped her gun to her side, Sam’s face fell in disbelief.  As soon as Pete’s full attention turned back to Dean, Diana shot her partner.

Sam watched Dean roll away, not exactly to safety but at least out of direct range from where he had been.  Diana walked towards where Pete lay on the ground and he tackled her, getting her gun off the ground.  Sam made a move towards him but he aimed the gun in his direction, telling Sam not to do it.

Pete swung the gun back and forth from Sam, to Dean, who was now sitting on his ass on the ground.  Dean put his hands up in acquiescence.  The brothers looked to each other speaking nothing but powerless desperation with their eyes.  Pete hobbled to stand over Diana, gun drawn, but then his attention was caught by a gasping sound from behind him.  He turned to see the ghost of Claire, the bloody slash across her throat causing a breathy horrible sound to emanate from deep within the gash.  Diana picked up Pete’s own gun while he was distracted and shot him in the back. 

Sam’s eyes found Dean’s who looked back at him in shock, and then finally began to show tentative relief.

Sam ran to Dean and unlocked the chains binding him with the key Diana threw in his direction.  He pulled his brother to his feet and wanted nothing more than to grab him harshly into an embrace, but instead, he just patted him on the back and stepped away, saying gruffly, “Glad you’re okay.”

Dean looked up at Sam, who he could tell was still shaken from the bad end Dean almost met, and said, “Glad you made it in time.”

Sam nodded, having a hard time talking around the lump in his throat.  “Yeah, me too.”

The brother’s stood shoulder to shoulder out of the way while the detective made sure Pete was dead.  She stood and walked over to them asking what would happen to Claire’s spirit.  Sam assured her that Claire should be at rest now that she had seen justice done for what had happened to her. 

Dean asked her what was going to happen to them, and she said that because of Pete’s confession, and because he screwed up both of their cases, she thought she could have all the charges dropped against them.  Sam laughed in disbelief.  But then she told them that she couldn’t do anything about the St. Louis murder charges.  The only thing she could do was turn her back and if they happened to escape then there would be nothing she could do about that.  She told them to get going so she could call in what happened.

Before walking away, Dean found out where the Impala was and even though Diana warned them not to go after it, Sam knew they wouldn’t be leaving town without it.

They began walking down the dirt road back towards town side by side and in spite of knowing they were going to have to break into impound to steal the Impala, Sam’s heart was light.  Dean was back by his side and unscathed.  It was a better ending than many cases they had worked. 

Dean kept sneaking peeks up at Sam.  He could tell Sam was happy, but his brother wasn’t really giving off much of a vibe in any direction he could pick up, other than just relieved to be getting away from this case free and clear.

Dean cleared his throat and said, looking out at the road ahead, not trusting himself to face Sam as he asked, in a teasing voice, “So Sammy, were ya worried about me?”

The question caught his brother off guard.  Sam’s heart began to beat fast.  How the fuck was he supposed to answer that in a nonchalant way when he basically had held his breath from fear of finding Dean dead the entire the time from first hearing that the killer cop had Dean alone until Diana had shot the asshole.  His hands were still shaky from the image painted hauntingly on the back of his irises of Dean on his knees facing up at that gun.

He took a breath and put on an easy smile, and said as lightheartedly as he could, “No way, I knew I would find a way to rescue the damsel in distress.” He nudged Dean off the road slightly with a shove of his elbow.  The added weight of his cast gave the push a little more umpfh than he had meant. 

Dean laughed and said derisively, “You wish, princess.”  He moved back onto the path and knocked into the taller man with his shoulder. 

Sam’s smile was genuine as he looked down at Dean brightly.

“You were the reason this entire case went sideways to begin with, getting yourself caught over a dead body.” Sam made a tsking noise against his teeth, showing disapproval of his brother’s shoddy casework.

Dean huffed and came back with “Nuh uh.”  Forever the master of witty comebacks.

Sam continued the onslaught, shaking his head in mock disappointment.  “You were the reason they found me at the hotel and arrested me in the first place.”  He lowered his eyebrows in teasing disgust, “Carrying around a matchbook from the hotel?”

He shook his mop of hair in disapproval.  “Real amateur hour there, big brother.”

“Hey!”  Dean’s face blushed a deep scarlet going almost to a dark purple tint around his neck. 

Sam could barely hold back the laughter watching his brother go apoplectic.  Sam tried to maintain a straight face as he refused to let up.  “Then to sell my whereabouts out to Detective Hotstuff?  Really Dean, how could you?”

“It was to save her life and you know it!”  Dean’s voice raised an octave in indignation.

Sam’s laughter rang out so loudly, a flock of birds took flight out of the grassy field they were walking by.  It wasn’t often he got to tease his brother so mercilessly.  He was usually on the torturous receiving end of things like this.

He doubled over feet firmly planted in the dusty road, hands on his knees for support as laughter rolled out of his middle.  The hysteria continued and he found he couldn’t stop until there were tears pouring from his eyes. 

Dean said loudly, “Laugh it up fuzzball.” And stormed off down the road in faux scorn.

Sam’s heart hitched and suddenly his tears were no longer the happy kind.  He found himself crying from the aftermath of the adrenaline dump.  He had been petrified for Dean.  He had feared that his brother would be dead by the time they found him and Sam hadn’t had time to really decompress from it. 

Dean made it several long strides before realizing Sam wasn’t catching up.  He turned around and looked expecting his brother to be somehow making fun of him behind his back, but he saw Sam bent over, his breath hitching hard.  At first, Dean thought Sam was still laughing at his expense, but something seemed off.  Sam wasn’t making much sound at all but his back was having tiny convulsions and he quickly realized his brother was crying.

“Hey, Sammy, what is it?” He rushed to Sam’s side and put his hand gently, hesitantly, on his back.

Sam stood suddenly, his face tear streaked, and pushed Dean backwards in anger.

“What the…” Dean’s temper flared, replacing the concern with indignation.

“That’s twice now, in just a matter of weeks that you have almost died on me, Dean.”  Sam’s voice broke and more tears trailed down his already wet cheeks.

A sob stole his breath as he covered his mouth trying to hold in the overwhelming emotion he was feeling.

Dean reached out a hand towards his shoulder, gently trying to hush Sam as he would a wild horse.

“I’m right here, Sam.  I’m okay.” Dean made small shushing sounds, as he rubbed up and down Sam’s arm.

“Yeah but for how long?” Sam shrugged out of the comforting contact and began to walk off angrily down the road again.

The question threw Dean.  Sam was the one who was always threatening to leave, Dean had never thought about what kind of toll his own brushes with death had taken on his little brother.  If what he suspected was true, and Sam did have unbrotherly feelings for Dean, it must have been torture for him all the times Dean had been close to death this past year.

“God Sam, I’m sorry.”

That stopped Sam in his tracks.  _Did Dean actually just apologize?_   He blinked a minute and then turned on his heel, back towards where his brother was trying to quickly catch up to him over the distance his longer strides had carried him.

Sam’s eyes looked haunted when he met Dean’s worried gaze.  He didn’t say anything, just looked at Dean as if he had suddenly grown two heads.

Dean said earnestly, “I mean it Sam, I never thought about how any of this might weigh on you.”

Sam blinked in disbelief, and his mouth fell open in a small gape as he tried to catch his breath from all the rapid roller coaster emotions.

“Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”  Was all Sam managed before a few tears rolled down his cheeks again.  He wiped at them angrily, before giving a harsh laugh at the confused surprised smile his statement had forced from Dean.  His breath was stolen by how beautiful Dean’s face was in the early morning light.  He stared into Dean’s eyes for a minute before catching himself and looking away.  He hoped the blush he felt warming his cheeks were hidden by the tears and his hair falling down on the sides of his face as he looked down at the road.

Dean threw his arm around Sam’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze as he said, “Come on baby brother,” he smiled secretly to himself as he felt Sam’s breath hitch again, and Dean watched Sam’s blush deepen to a rosy red as it trailed down his brother’s neck, before Dean let his arm fall away to hang back at his own side.

“Let’s get a move on before the cops show up.  We have to rescue Baby from where they have her wrongly imprisoned.”

Sam’s bright smile dimpled his cheeks as he quickened his pace, still looking down at the road.  Dean didn’t press him, just relished a surprising warm happiness as it began to grow in his chest, an unfamiliar optimism sprouting from the rich soil of hope now shining from inside his darkness, replacing the arid inhospitable despair, left behind from years of fear, heartache and self hatred, born from loving his brother too deeply.

**Author's Note:**

> This one was a challenge. It is hard to point out instances of Wincest when the boys are kept apart. Hopefully you liked what I did with it anyway. 
> 
> I always loved this episode because of the glee Dean seemed to get by confessing the real stuff going on with the case. But more than that, I love love love how deep Dean's trust is in Sam, that he is going to solve this thing and also protect the detective when he sends her to Sam. He just has complete blind faith in his brother to do the job and assumes the rest will take care of itself somehow.
> 
> And you know how worried Sam has to be about Dean's being in trouble with the law. Yet he works the case because people are in danger, and because that is what Dean wants him to do. Gah... I love these men!!!
> 
> Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments. You are better than coffee in the morning!


End file.
